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We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

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Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#371

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

barney54 wrote: post #261
systemtest wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no problem biking in 100+ degrees weather up a 50 meter hill. Just take a shower when you arrive at work.

I agree with this and I have done this for years. However, having to take a shower is an extra source of friction that makes biking a bit more challenging in hot climates.

tl;dr are you sure those showers are necessary? If you stink when you sweat it could be because your skin is reacting to periodic exposure to soap and/or hot water.

---

It only breaks 100 occasionally here in Colorado, but it's plenty hilly and I ditched my car for a bike 8 years back. I arrive at the office sweaty pretty frequently, and I neither shower nor bring a change of clothes. Luckily the air is so dry that the sweat evaporates quickly.

At first I did a lot of showering, but then my skin suffered. The doctor recommended using less soap without going into how much less, so I asked a few close friends to be brutally honest about whether I was stinky while I reduced my soap exposure and started to look for correlations.

I pretty quickly ended up reducing by soap exposure to practically none (I still use hand soap though).

About two weeks after I quit using soap while bathing my skin has started behaving differently. I can no longer correlate sweating a few hours ago with being stinky now. (Admittedly, is hard to get real data on stuff like this).

Somebody always tells me I'm gross when I confess that now I only shower once every four days or so, but 90% of the time somebody mentions a case where I was stinky, they're taking about day two after the shower, not day five.

My theory is that even exposure to just hot running water depletes the skin of some resource, and about 24 hours after the shower I'm at my stinkiest because whatever process replenishes that resource is at a peak. By 48 hours this has subsided and my scent is steady-state. (i.e. body odor correlates with the derivative--not the absolute value, of this resource. It might be bacteria, or oils, or pheramones, I'm not sure).

I've also found that by avoiding cotton or synthetics in my shirts, I can get get a week's worth of wears out of them (I just cycle them so that the color changes and nobody asks).

I think that people in general are frequently wrong about the causes and effects around bathing, but the social conventions are too strong to help them, so occasionally I go on a rant like this, just in case I can help save somebody else from soap. Thanks for listening.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#372

Post by brnt »

chapium wrote: post #355
brnt wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to make cycling the norm. Adding items you need to wear or have (you could mandate a cycling license for instance) increases the barrier to entry and thus use. Moreover, helmets protect only for certain accidents, accidents which are some of the most uncommon. The danger comes mostly from bad infra design and other heavier traffic (cars). Those can be addressed separately, and it turns out pretty well. L…

Calling while cycling or driving are not equivalents. A vehicle is much more massive than a bike and to use a phone while accelerating is far more negligent. The chances of a cyclist accident harming someone other than themselves while on a phone are far lower than distracted driving accident.

Sure, but 'phone-use' while cycling (thanks ;)) is the number two reason bikes cause lethal accidents for themselves or other bicycles, i.e. it's a big deal.

Source (in Dutch): https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/fietsers-voor-h...

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#373

Post by eMSF »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #340
rapnie wrote: post #232

What I see a lot in this thread is people's either/or opinions. Love cars / hate bycicles or vice versa. No. It is a balancing act, where cars, bycicles and public transport co-exist, and infrastructure is developed strategically in smart ways and in a prolonged effort. When I was young in The Netherlands for the most part the cars still dominated the streets. Over time I've seen cities and road networks gradually be…

I disagree. There is no need for a "balancing act" between cars and public transport. More public transport and less cars is always an improvement.

Which is why you shouldn't be making the decisions.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#374

Post by cyborgx7 »

chapium wrote: post #363
bluGill wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually that isn't practical though. You cannot take a pallet of anything on any sort of transit and never will, it will always be delivered on non-public systems. Your new couch has the same problem. Train tracks to your front door are easy to imagine, but the flexibility of roads (with cars and trucks on it) is a lot more cost effective.

Public logistics for consumer freight would be pretty awesome actually.

When I was moving a year and a half ago, without a car something like that would have come in handy. Every one or 2 weeks I would see a piece of second-hand furniture I could have used, but had no way of getting it to my new home. I could have payed for the furniture, but didn't have the money for movers or to rent a truck every time I found something.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#375

Post by gpm »

brnt wrote: post #332
openfuture wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be classified by acceleration not velocity. Weight and velocity are also important (potential energy which could cause harm) but acceleration is the right way to sort things into lanes, there can also be an energy constraint for the lane but acceleration is about being able to anticipate the behavior of something so that you can avoid the accident in the first place. Electric bikes can accelerate fast and t…

Well, acceleration may be non-linear (bikes accelerate 0-10 faster than anything else, which is why sometimes in NL bikes may wait in front of cars before stoplights[1]). Top-speed and weight are also important factors in whether or not it would be smart to mix. However, this results in a matrix of separated lanes that is impractical ;) Finding a good compromise (such as [1]) I think is a better idea. Lowering car sp…

> bikes accelerate 0-10 faster than anything else

As a cyclist, I don't believe this claim for a second.

When a car starts moving at the same time as me, it's faster than me from the start. Which makes sense, it has more horse power per unit mass.

Often I do start moving first, because I think I'm less likely to get right hooked if I do so. But that's a result of paying attention and having my for on the "accelerator" waiting to go. (Also maybe a tiny bit of lag for a car to get into gear, but that's not substantial).

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#376

Post by willis936 »

jacobparker wrote: post #370
willis936 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biking isn’t safe enough to not wear a helmet just because there have been changes to make biking less likely to have an accident. If putting on a helmet is too much work then physically moving yourself to your destination is wayyy too much work. That is to say, it isn’t too much work and it isn’t a barrier to entry. At the very least citizens should appreciate the danger of biking without a helmet even if they choos…

> Biking isn’t safe enough to not wear a helmet Could you explain why you think that? That’s a pretty general statement. Are you imagining city biking here, or something more like racing in the country-side? Some data about how this is dangerous could be convincing: https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E count the helmets. Just to be clear, I’m not against helmets (I wear one, as is custom in my country).

No, I don’t have the data on hand or the time to hunt down studies that may well not exist. That shouldn’t keep people from knowing what they know. City biking regularly gets up to 15 mph. No I don’t have a citation. Falling over the handlebars is likely when coming to a sudden stop. Brain injuries are not going to be rare occurrences in such cases. No I don’t have a citation.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#377

Post by cyborgx7 »

eMSF wrote: post #373
cyborgx7 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There is no need for a "balancing act" between cars and public transport. More public transport and less cars is always an improvement.

Which is why you shouldn't be making the decisions.

How silly of me. We should definitely organize MORE of our society around the needs of car owners. /s

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#379

Post by brnt »

eMSF wrote: post #378

>As if that weren’t enough, they also stole our primary public spaces in cities: the streets. The irony of this feelgood narrative is that cyclists don't want pedestrians on their ways, either.

And for good reason: safe travel means separating speeds. Here in NL, the average cycling speed is about 20kph. Walking is about 5kph, 3 for the elderly. It's not a very good idea to share spaces. If space is the problem, it would be better to merge car and bike traffic [1][2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard#Netherlands [2] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsstraat

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#380

Post by helen___keller »

willis936 wrote: post #358
helen___keller wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> looking cooler I don't think it's about looking cooler, it's about barrier to entry. It's like adding a 15 character requirement to passwords on your application and rotating them weekly. Most people will give up on your application before they even give it a try. OPs point is that cities should make it a goal for biking to be safe regardless of if you have a helmet. I daresay biking without a helmet in Copenhagen…

Biking isn’t safe enough to not wear a helmet just because there have been changes to make biking less likely to have an accident. If putting on a helmet is too much work then physically moving yourself to your destination is wayyy too much work. That is to say, it isn’t too much work and it isn’t a barrier to entry. At the very least citizens should appreciate the danger of biking without a helmet even if they choos…

I guess I can't disagree with you on that, because ultimately I agree bikers should wear helmets and if I biked I would wear a helmet. It's just that the infrastructure to protect from cars is vastly more important.

As a pedestrian who walks about 30m each way on my morning commute, it terrifies me that if a car strikes me at 31MPH I have a 50% chance of severe injury. At 42 MPH, it's a 50% chance of death ( https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve... ). Atleast I have a separated sidewalk most of my commute, minus street crossings. I would never consider biking in my city because I have to be there on the street next to a bunch of cars.

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